The Light of the Word

Chapter 1 introduces the context in which Doré’s biblical imagery emerged by focusing on the status of the Bible in the visual culture of nineteenth-century France, with particular emphasis on book illustration. Relying on photographic documentation of Doré’s original drawings, this chapter begins the process of articulating Doré’s visual language and its relationship to preceding attempts at comprehensive Bible illustration projects. The distinction between “biblical” and “religious” imagery is significant in setting the stage for the Doré Bible, as it was initially produced for French Catholic audiences, a contingent for whom direct engagement with the Bible was historically discouraged or even forbidden. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, biblical illustration in the first half of the nineteenth century reveals the continued centrality of the Bible to artistic and public life in the wake of religious and intellectual upheavals.